When you're freshly post-pubescent, the lips are the gateways to all pleasure. Just touching two sets together releases the floodgates below. And once the mouth begins exploring other areas, no publicly exposed skin is safe - along the clavicle, behind the knees, in the armpits, even. Unsure of how far you can go, but hungry for more and more, you end up snogging like a Dyson. That's why lovebites are so popular with kids - they're a way to be bad and bold with your kisser, PG-style.

Then you grow up and start having adult sex. But dismissing the hickey rules out a whole slew of sexual play even grown-ups can enjoy. For a start, it takes you back to simpler times, when you were young with bad skin and worse haircuts, as well as when sex was new and, most important, fun. Giving or receiving a lovebite taps into your animal instincts - that toothy grip of the lion on the back of his mate's neck while doing it like they do on the Discovery Channel. Delivering or submitting to a passion purpura (as it's known medically) lets you live out your vampire fantasies after catching a particularly saucy episode of Buffy. And if you're on the receiving end of someone's suction cup, the hickey serves as a happy, albeit surprising, reminder of what you got up to the night before. You wake up the next morning, the previous evening's romp a happy blur, and look in the bathroom mirror to discover an imprint the size of Wales on your neck.

Sure, on the one hand it may get you some ribbing at the office, but on the other it's proud proof that, even though you're no longer a teenager, you're still getting some.